Melbourne wins priority in domain name draw

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Could have its top-level domain a year ahead of Sydney.

The City of Melbourne has come out ahead in an international lottery to determine the order in which some 1930 applications for new generic top-level domains will be processed.

Melbourne wins priority in domain name draw

International domain name regulator ICANN today conducted a “prioritisation draw” as part of its move to introduce gTLDs beyond the familiar .com, .net and .org.

In a bid to promote a global internet, ICANN prioritised internationalised domain names (IDN) in the lottery, assigning the first 116 places to gTLD applications involving non-Latin characters.

The Vatican’s application to register .catholic in Chinese characters won the top spot, followed by Amazon’s .store in Japanese and International Domain Registry’s .web in Arabic.

Insurance comparison service provider iSelect was the first Australian organisation to emerge from the ICANN’s lottery barrel, with its application for .select set to be the 173rd gTLD application to be evaluated.

The City of Melbourne was the seventh of 66 applicant cities to emerge from the barrel, ranking 350th in the draw.

German city Koeln was the first city to be drawn, winning the rank of 126, while the City of Sydney placed 1352nd.

ARI Registry, which was contracted by the Victorian and NSW Governments to register .melbourne, .victoria and .sydney this February, said the 1002-place gap in the cities’ rankings could account for a six- to 12-month difference in implementation.

Other Australian applications in the top 500 included Monash University’s .monash at 338, Open Universities Australia’s .study at 349 and the Commonwealth Bank’s .cba at 378.

Three of Australia’s big four banks applied to register gTLD strings. NAB’s .ubank and .nab came in at 783 and 984 respectively, while the ANZ Group’s .anz took the 1382nd spot.

ARI Registry chief executive officer Adrian Kinderis said rankings would give some gTLDs a first-mover advantage over others, highlighting potential competition between .film and .movie as examples.

Some applicants made an event of today’s ten-hour draw, with registrar Uniregistry hiring someone to dress up as Santa for the six hours until its .christmas application was drawn.

Thirty-two Australian organisations have applied to register a total of 40 domains in Round 1 of ICANN’s gTLD program.

The next round of the program is due to commence after the current round. Industry players expect it to take another three years before Round 2 applications are accepted.

Australian applicants have drawn the following priority rankings (pdf):

Applicant gTLD string Rank
AFL .afl 1419
AMP .amp 608
ANZ .anz 1382
Aesthetics Practitioners Advisory Network .salon 413 but will be considered alongside competing applications for the same gTLD in positioni 855
Australian Cancer Research Foundation .cancerresearch 1568
Australia Post .auspost 1728
BestTLD .best 1729
Bond University .bond 1145
CEOTLD .ceo 206
Commonwealth Bank .cba 378
.commbank 1148
.netbank 1224
CPA Australia .cpa 1609, with competing applications
Global Domain Registry .book 1464 but will be considered with competitors in position 1878
GlobalX .globalx 1007
iiNet .iiNet 1199
International Domain Registry .network in Arabic script 3
iSelect .select 173
.compare 949
.iselect 370
KredTLD .kred 1543
LaTrobe University .latrobe 802
Monash University .monash 338
Motion Picture Domain Registry .film 862 but will be considered alongside competitors in position 963
.movie 623 but will be considered alongside competitors in position 1908
NAB .nab 984
.ubank 783
NSW/Victorian Governments .sydney 1352
.melbourne 350
Open Universities Australia .courses 954
.study 349
PhysBiz .physio 929
RMIT .rmit 1095
SBS .sbs 1208
Seek .seek 1509
Seven .seven 1888
Tabcorp .tab 719
Telstra .yellowpages 1019
Tennis Australia .tennis 981 but will be considered alongside competitors in position 1417
Webjet .webjet 639
Woodside Petroleum .woodside 938
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